The Canopy

Chapter 2

Neath the blanket of an omnipresent canopy the world seems damp and dark, yet comforting and warm. I have my hood tight about my head and the patter of rain only closes the canopy further in around my back spooning my soul and keeping it safe. Funny to think that a $300 technobabble shell has the same drawstrings sported by the feed and seed red slicker I wore from childhood. One would think from the marketing that the latest rocket science graduate designed this jacket for the “serious business” that is incurred from the inhospitable landscape 14,000 ft above this canopy. However, the truth is that the water still does creep up my sleeves to wet my skin, and I realize that the rocket scientists are just government employees like myself and also have to turn in travel vouchers to their mindful administrative assistants even when their destinations are otherworldly.

Space is far from my understanding during these long rainy days beneath this canopy. The celestial bodies have not been seen in these parts since just after Labor Day and it is a wonder that astronomy is a viable subject in the local schools. For I can’t imagine anyone would believe the teachers with their fanciful tales of billions of lights in the sky.

“Sunlight? Moonlight? Starlight?” the students would repeat in wonder, “All we know is the ambient light produced by the clouds, and the wobbly beams of headlights and lamplights filtered through our rain spattered windows.”

Standing beneath this ancient flora I feel more bounded to the earth than even the bedrock. One hundred percent humidity and I might as well have the whole Pacific weighing me down to this spot beneath these trees with my feet firmly planted on saturated leaves and sticks and earth. Here I am longing to see beyond the blocked periphery of my hood and the meaty vegetation before me and I imagine I can see a slight vertical cut through the tangle of leaves and branches. This would be an old Indian trail that winds its way upward. It climbs and climbs until it bursts above the canopy through the clouds and brings its passenger into another world. Windswept, frozen and dangerous it may be, but also beautiful and unconstrained. From there you can look down on river valleys filled with white clouds settling like glacial masses. The weight concentrates in these valleys keeping their inhabitants in sluggish hibernation.

So with my space suit battened down along with my technical boots and pack I move forward and up. Climbing upward hoping to break through the clouds and the pull of gravity. Hoping to unfetter myself from this earth and look down on my home from above.

Breaking Morning

Chapter 1

Woken by a weeping wind pressing on moss laden boughs. Without strong breath a first cough breaks the puss sealed eyelids. In fits and starts dispersing, the cough shakes the body awake. First awareness is the wet air, laden with molden spores blowing over contorted blankets. A numb arm turns the body over allowing warm air out. A scratching sheet is left to irritate now cold skin. Rubbing rub-worn lashes, a morning light is broken by dust laden gray rays. As the rays come into focus the smell of last nights fire yet still reeks and all around the creaking A-frame moans its morning breath.

This type of awakening leaves you with no doubt that late winter is a reality rather than a cozy dream. Stealing worn sheets to cover exposed limbs the mind reflects on an evening lost. Within a few minutes the bed is no longer a retreat and you stagger for yesterday’s underwear and a still damp towel. Perhaps, that first thought was a wish to be still drunk. Instead the legs carry you to the shower, while the brain considers were the misplaced glasses are. Within fifteen minutes the keys, bag, stone cold bagel and tea flask are outside, but no eyewear to be seen. Back inside another five minutes are spent retracing last night stumbles; finally it is possible to lock the door, cursing wistfully at a brought on forgetfulness. You know this attitude is negative and can’t remain. Soon, coffee will start the day. Alone, the house left behind passes in the mirror, but the drab blue walls and silver grey shingles are quickly hidden by beggar bent hemlocks and a brigade of nettles.

The radio will advise that traffic approaching the city far away from here is snarled up, yet this road stretches all before you. Cresting the hill, a sharp band of transparent moisture laden air cuts across your vision rising from the sag that forms the valley floor. The rising air leads an eye up the pathy hills to a rocky outcrop, known by the name Mount Wow. Well behind Wow, a watery sun is stumbling over a jagged black horizon line. The vehicle slows, approaching the entrance into old growth trees. Venerable respect to natures last strand. Passing with care under the cedar arch you can’t miss the Douglas fir left of the entrance booth is freshly scarred. RV’d by some knight of the road, rushing to leave behind a canopy that with an already low slung sun, darkens day in a valley . In another fifteen minutes the moss laden forest gives itself up to a village of sorts. This arrival at work, with car windows blaring open, comes with a realization that the smell of morning remains constant yet the light is ever changing.

Darkmoss 2

Prologue 1.2

From the white and blue and scoured grey of the glacial tundra to the green upon green upon green of the maritime forest to the green and brown and blue of the costal plain. Your brain can be starved of breath and sustenance in the white out of the mountain’s cap in the faint glimmer of sunrise. Within the same day you can be back down, soaked with oxygen and the H2O around you will be in it’s more fluid state. And by that I mean pouring around your head. The full frontal force of the downpour caught in the green upon green upon evergreen needles only to drip down to you in the form of a torrent. If you are with me thus far we have traveled up and back through eight or nine ecozones.

Woke up this morning, and now the sadness is in front of me.

Darkmoss

Prologue 1.1

"Woke up this morning with sadness all over me. You see darkmoss is my first name, second is misery. As you know, this goes from lines of an old song I heard a whiles back and although it comforts me, it sure as hell don't calm me." -- Darkmoss Misery

This is the story of Dark Cedars, a grand old landscape stretching from the shores of the sea up to a snow capped summit, 13,821 feet high. Between those bottom and top layers lie tide pools, rocky cliffs, sand dunes, coastal pine forest, old growth forest, subapline meadows, snow fields, glaciers --all the way up to one wide angled view of weather, not the weather you see on the tv, but real weather, approaching fast and telling you to shuttle down faster.